In LA fire horror, California elites face the consequences of blue misrule

"The vivid, heartbreaking images from this week’s Los Angeles wildfires called urgent attention to California’s longtime decline.
But this time, those affected by its bad policies and bad governance include a demographic rarely touched by them: the rich.

Over the last several years, California’s net out-migration numbers set records.
An astounding 343,000 more people left the Golden State than moved to it in 2022, the highest net loss of any state, and 2023 was almost as bad, with a net loss of 268,100.
But the wealthy of California largely stayed put.
It was mostly the lower and middle classes, walloped by notoriously high taxes, mismanagement at every level of government and crumbling infrastructure, who made a run for the door.
The affluent have been largely protected from all that.
They could easily absorb the heavy tax burden and the high costs of housing or gas.
Like Gov. Gavin Newsom, they could avoid their state’s failing public schools and send their kids to private schools instead.
But no water in a fire hydrant is a great equalizer.
Newsom has been the physical embodiment of the shrugging emoji throughout this crisis.
Asked why there was no water in the hydrants, Newsom passed the buck: “Look, the local folks are trying to figure that out,” he said.
Mayor Karen Bass shut down completely and looked catatonic when she was challenged by a reporter with questions like “Do you regret cutting the Fire Department budget by millions of dollars?” Blank stare.
The worst part is this crisis was entirely predictable — so predictable in fact that incoming president Donald Trump noted California’s ongoing water problem on Joe Rogan’s podcast three months ago." NYP